


He Should Have Been the One

by TNB



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Happy Ending, I promise, Keith is going through the motions of grief, Loss, M/M, Pining, Post-Kerberos Mission, Pre-Kerberos Mission, Regret, Reunions, SHEITH - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-07 03:32:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14662422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TNB/pseuds/TNB
Summary: Keith is going through the motions of loss. He's felt anger and grief, but most of all he's felt regret.





	He Should Have Been the One

**Author's Note:**

> Trying to get in some pre kerb sheith before S6 hopefully spills the beans!

Keith saying that Shiro’s death was a terrible accident and tragedy is like saying that the mustard gas used in World War I was a war crime, or that child labor is a human rights violation; that is, it’s not wrong, but it is a gross understatement of every feeling in the core of his heart.

When Keith first heard the news, it was a secondhand statement from one of his peers at the Galaxy Garrison.

“Crazy about Kerberos, huh?” he had said. “He was so talented, I wonder what went wrong?”

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When you see tragedy unfold on the big screen it’s always someone gently relaying the information so the affected can slowly fall apart as you watch their grief spread through them. Keith did not get this luxury, he was given the information in an offhand comment and left to marinate over it. He had to go to class.

After picking more students for information, and piecing it together, Keith felt the cracks in his world finally shatter completely. The shock held back the grief and tears, and he sat in class for what felt like hours. Time warped, his vision blurred. The next thing he knew he was in his dorm with the screen turned onto the news.

Still no tears as he watched the newscaster relay information in a cold and fake-morose way, but he felt his body grow numb and the acid in his stomach slosh around trying to digest what wasn’t there.

It hit like whiplash the next morning in the shower; Shiro died during a crash on Kerberos and Keith would never see him again. He doubled over in the shower and great, heaving sobs ripped from his body as ringlets of water ran down from his hair into his face, threatening to choke him.

When his dehydrated body could produce no more tears, and the shower water threatened to turn cold, he toweled off and went back to bed, and stayed there for the next two days. One of his teachers finally came by to check on him, and he excused himself as sick and unable to attend class.

Four days in, when Keith could not go without food any longer, he made his way to the cafeteria. He refused to make eye contact with anyone else, sitting alone and eating quickly before attempting to head back. He could hear their whispers, but they didn’t matter.

“Wasn’t Keith close with him?”

“I heard he revered the guy.”

“His eyes look red, poor thing.”

None of them would ever know the depth of his and Shiro’s relationship. They couldn’t. It’s not that words couldn’t convey the feelings – artists waxed poetic about it more beautifully than Keith ever could – it’s that Keith would be sharing his deepest secret that not even Shiro knew about.

Love was a tricky thing like that, it snuck up on you; after nights smuggled out on a ‘borrowed’ four-wheeler in the desert; after shared extra dessert sweettalked from the cafeteria workers; after hopes and dreams and future plans were talked about over and over and you somehow always featured in each other’s.

And it just kept creeping up and up until Keith could no longer push it down into his gut any longer and he let it bloom and spread over his cheeks in a glowing blush every time. And Shiro would just smile back bright as the sun and twice as easy to gravitate around.

It was ironic that he was the furthest from Earth, and the Sun, than anyone had ever been when he died because it was just so unfair. It was cruel for someone so brilliant and luminous to leave in such a dark and cold place.

And Keith, he never got to say it.

He was planning on saying it after Shiro’s triumphant return. To come back a decorated pilot and space explorer, a hero amongst men. And Keith would congratulate him and wait; wait until the people had said their share and cleared out, until he was alone with Keith again back in his room.

Keith now regretted that he didn’t say it before he left. He was so close to it, at the launch. For Shiro to invite him along to such a personal moment was everything to Keith, it made him feel special and wanted for the first time ever.

And the night before, when Shiro snuck some good wine back from the launch banquet, he got tipsy and almost said it. He should have said it.

But now he was face-to-face with Iverson right outside the cafeteria with no Shiro and no wits about him and a clenched fist that hasn’t seen action in days.

And Keith tried to explain it, the absences. But it was so hard when you’re being grilled and the only thing you can think about is how the person you want most in the whole world is gone and everything is being blamed on them.

Shiro was the best pilot in the whole damn place and Keith didn’t believe a lick of what Iverson said. “Pilot Error,” what a load of BS.

Keith let him know as much, in the form of his fist meeting Iverson’s face, and then packed up and headed out. He had little to nothing and nowhere to go and that was just fine.

Because while the grief washes over him in waves and has him sitting down to let it out every now and then, it’s the regret that keeps him going. It keeps him walking through the desert, and making makeshift shelters, and following some bizarre feeling that makes no sense but keeps pushing him east.

It’s the strength of his regret that leads him to an abandoned shack with a rusty old hovercraft and dozens of topographical maps of the area.

Keith has always lived by following his intuitions, and right now they were telling him this was very right even though it all felt so very wrong. So he threw himself into work, fixing up the place and the hovercraft and following his intuitions out into the desert’s canyon every now and then.

Every time the magnetic pull draws him in closer to the canyon he feels a little closer to Shiro, and he always wonders if he’s about to die too. That some great force will finally allow them to be together, to give Keith his chance to say those words. But the feeling always passes, and Keith spends another night on a lumpy futon with glassy eyes and a dry mouth.

And then, one night, Keith wakes to his stomach doing flips and his whole body viscerally reacting to an energy source he can’t comprehend. Something tells him to head west and he takes the hovercraft out just in time to see a spacecraft enter the atmosphere and crash to the Earth.

When Keith recovers Shiro, and has him in his bed, and can touch his face and feel his hair and hold his hand in his, the reaction isn’t instantaneous. It’s not until the morning light hits and Shiro blinks his eyes open and gently touches Keith’s face with a prosthetic arm that Keith finally says it. Over and over and over until he’s breathless and red in the face and Shiro looks so confused and happy.

He doesn’t remember much, being in space and kidnapped by aliens, but he remembers that he loved Keith. Still loves him.

And Keith feels one less stone weighing him down.

**Author's Note:**

> Talk to me on Twitter! @TNBwrites


End file.
